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It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

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Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#111

Post by smabie »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #109
smabie wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to a law that makes it illegal?

No, which is why I raised the question - why isn't it illegal? Given the acts with a social cost that soon follow to "pay" for the company's acquisition? Redundancies etc.

It isn’t illegal because no one made it illegal, it’s pretty obvious no? But being a little less flippant, I can’t see any reason why it should be illegal. If I buy a company I should be able to do whatever I want with it. If shareholders didn’t have the power to make choices about the company they own, the very fabric of capitalism would be undermined.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#112

Post by smabie »

zozbot234 wrote: post #47
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (human) models and photographers will be in real trouble when generative models are able to make an ad on the fly with a fake person who looks like your neighbor with the best landscaping using the advertised lawnmower.

Um, last I checked, AI models of humans looked super, super creepy. Not the sort of content you would want on a marketing campaign, that's for sure.

When was the last time you checked? Because the last time I checked I found it hard to tell the difference.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#113

Post by dpau »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #107

I still don't understand how making a purchased company responsible for the debt of its own purchase is legal: > Getty’s private-equity owners had financed the purchase of Getty with massive debt — $2.6 billion in the case of Carlyle — which became Getty’s debt.

I'm surprised this is the only comment even mentioning private equity, while the article seems to point to the private equity takeover as the root of many of Getty's problems. While changes in the industry and technology have made things tough, I imagine Getty could have found a way to muddle along while still supporting photographers. But with all that debt and pressure to profit, it was almost inevitable that Getty became the disgusting leach that we know today..

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#114

Post by jimmux »

kachurovskiy wrote: post #20

Registered on Shutterstock 11 months ago, added 9 photos, sold 3 for a grand total of $0.75. Selling stock photos made sense for photographers 10-20 years ago, not worth it anymore unless you're at the very top. For the reference: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/MateoSan

I gave Shutterstock and Getty a go some years ago to see what would happen. From about a dozen photos, none of them make any money except one.

It's a bit annoying because that one photo is a generic image of a cargo ship. The rest are technically and aesthetically more interesting landscape and nature images. They just don't have the same commercial value as something that someone conveys a general and frequently applicable concept like "shipping".

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#115

Post by plorkyeran »

SignalsFromBob wrote: post #66
zozbot234 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, last I checked, AI models of humans looked super, super creepy. Not the sort of content you would want on a marketing campaign, that's for sure.

This has changed. It's hard to tell they're fake. For example, each reload of https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ produces a new computer-generated image of a person.

I reloaded the page ten times and every single one had something clearly off.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#116

Post by RobertRoberts »

iudqnolq wrote: post #100
RobertRoberts wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contract part is probably poor wording on my part. The contract is between the government at the public in that there is no such thing as a natural protections against copying. So the government enforces an artificial period of time of sole ownership of something that otherwise cannot be owned. Single mom was sued for millions of dollars years ago because she put 40 songs (or some low number) on the Mule/Donkey f…

Thanks for the detailed response. I'm not convinced by the natural law argument because everything, including property law, falls apart if you look at it that way. I hadn't learned about either story, though, and your point that multinationals just negotiate it away is something I hadn't thought through.

The "natural law" argument can be demonstrated in a couple of stories. Years ago there was a very strong copyright on sheet music in the US. (1800s some time) And sheet music was kept very secure. But then competing composers/musicians hired people that could hear the music and write down the sheet music from memory.

(ie, simply expressing or performing an idea and having other people experience it means it can be copied.)

There was another copyright battle in the early US over fonts. To this day you can copy any font Adobe or anyone else makes, because you can't copyright the alphabet. You can only copyright the code that makes the font. You can make identical fonts for every Adobe font legally, and they can look identical as long as your underlying font code is different. Consider the laws on fonts before there was "code" to display a font?

There's stories about coat buttons and other odds things as well. Laurence Lessig gave a talk on the history of copyright a long time ago that is incredibly insightful on this topic. (I can't find that exact talk on Youtube any more) But one point that was interesting is that without copyright laws, originally nothing was copyrighted, but today it's believed/taught that everything is.

Edit: I appreciate your willingness to look into this topic, and I feel I may have come across harshly in my first reply to you. I hope you didn't take it to badly. I am trying to tone down my internet voice.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#117

Post by dvtrn »

revicon wrote: post #103

There are so many free stock photo sites out there these days that I can't understand why anyone would be hitting Getty up for anything. The quality across the free sites can vary but some are incredibly good. I made a list of about 50 a year ago, there's probably twice that number now. https://www.mattcrampton.com/blog/mega_list_of_free_image_si...

I can’t imagine why anyone would want to be hitting up Getty for anything

I run a local sports blog covering a pair of National Football League and Major League Baseball teams. If I want high res, quality photos of the most recent games or photos of specific players or photo highlights I really don’t know of or have any alternatives other than Getty and the AP to get pictures specific to my teams.

If you know such a site I will happily check it out but there’s your answer.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#118

Post by gnicholas »

lsd3 wrote: post #81

I used to earn over 100 usd per photo sale on 500px. Since they started licensing through Getty I get pennies. Litterally. Just a few days ago one of my photos got licensed where I received less than 1 usd in fees. I went to check on Getty's website and saw the cheapest you could license it from there was 50 usd. Talk about greed and getting screwed. I'm removing all my photos from 500px within a month.

How much do you get when it's licensed on Getty for $50? It's an apples-and-oranges comparison to talk about your cut from 500px and the gross fee on Getty. I'm sure your cut on Getty is bigger, but I'm curious to know if it's 10x bigger or 50x bigger.

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#119

Post by mickael-kerjean »

SignalsFromBob wrote: post #66
zozbot234 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, last I checked, AI models of humans looked super, super creepy. Not the sort of content you would want on a marketing campaign, that's for sure.

This has changed. It's hard to tell they're fake. For example, each reload of https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ produces a new computer-generated image of a person.

> https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/

This is exactly why I read hacker news. This is both perturbing and amazing all in the same time with all the links you need to understand how it works under the hood. Thanks!

Re: It’s crunch time for Getty Images, and for photographers

#120

Post by cycrutchfield »

plorkyeran wrote: post #115
SignalsFromBob wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has changed. It's hard to tell they're fake. For example, each reload of https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ produces a new computer-generated image of a person.

I reloaded the page ten times and every single one had something clearly off.

It's hard to generate perfect images at high resolution. The fact that they are even plausible at high resolution is very impressive. If these were downscaled to 128x128 you would literally not be able to distinguish real from fake.
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